Have You Any Idea
by khallure
Summary: That dry, proper world above offered her everything and denied her everything. Primarily Alice/OC, but the main focus is Alice/Tarrant. Oneshot.


Hey guys (: This is actually my first H/A fanfic, so I hope I've done it rightly and properly and such. If you're wondering, the pairing is fundamentally Alice/Hatter, but it's kind of hidden under the more explicit Alice/OC. And yes, tis a oneshot. I never have the patience for chapter stories =/

Dislclaimer: I am Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Tim Burton. Boo. I own your soul. (: (lolnotrlythogaiz)

He had brown eyes. Plain, brown; plain John eyes. His cravat was strait and proper, his jacket pressed and expensive, and he smelled of vapid French cologne. It was not altogether unpleasant, so she didn't wrinkle her nose, not even mentally, as her mother would have told her to – get it out of her system somehow, but absolutely not in front of your guests. Daydream if you must, and she absolutely did must more of the time than not. So that blank look that most of them attributed to idiocy appeared almost perpetually across her face during one of the evening tea parties with the Roswells, the morning lunches with the Wellingtons, or even the dinner parties – these were especially important – with the esteemed Sir Arthur Middleton and his young wife. Sir Arthur, though married, had a brother of his own who was very much interested in her, and he had on several occasions called upon Alice at home, as her mother, in her own meddlesome ways, had spoken quite loudly of Alice in front of Sir Middleton. He was very wealthy; that was what she had been told. And he had brown eyes, a stern smile, closely shaven cheeks, and a small mustache that made him look very silly. His posture was very strait, and he spoke properly and eloquently, with a crisp, rapid tone punctuated frequently by the type of throat-clearing that irritated Alice immensely. And his eyes were not green, they were brown.

This aspect Alice found particularly bothersome. Not that she would have accepted him gladly had he been wearing green eyes when he bent to brush his lips across her hand; he was just so terribly dull! He droned on and on about the markets of France and Spain and thought himself very knowledgeable of the world; he ruminated incessantly in a hushed, condescendingly boring tone of the gossip of the day, thinking himself very accommodating to Alice's lady-like interests. Alice was neither impressed nor amused: she was decidedly bored. And tired.

His hair was a sandy shade of brown and perfectly tamed. It was parted keenly down the middle, and clipped just above his ears. Aside from he small brown caterpillar above his lip, not a single hair was out of place; in fact, she suspected he used rather excessive amount of gel to keep it from sticking up in wild directions. Perhaps he did it to impress her, perhaps to impress himself; little did he suspect, she might had liked him better if his hair had been a little crazier.

A little _madder_.

Because he had plain brown eyes, straw-like flat brown hair, and a pleasantly dry accent, she did not blush profusely when he kissed her knuckles like the perfect gentleman he was and looked up at her through lowered eyelashes. Because his clothes were of excellent taste, tailored immaculately and procured in the most expensive shops in London, she did not sigh pleasantly as he took her arm and let her out onto the balcony, leaving the lazy blue chatter of the evening ball behind. Because he spoke slowly and did not look at her eyes, but everywhere else, she felt her mind losing itself in the haze of descending dusk, felt her eyes drifting away from the windows which displayed the perfect party, across the smooth green lawns, hushed in shadow, and across a spiky line of trees. Her gaze caught the mood, or the moon caught her gaze, but somehow she found herself trapped inside the dim white ball of yawn – trapped for evermore. She was so warm and so lost that she scarcely felt the pressure of his hand upon her shoulder, his lips upon her skin, his nails brushing her neck.

Alice shivered. She watched the moon, and she felt a warm April breeze wrap itself around her neck, tease the folds of her dress, drive the air from her lungs with a vacant kiss. The dim realization gradually brought her back to reality, extracted her from the glowing white lake that she had willed herself to drown in, and she was very suddenly standing once again on the balcony, being embraced by Sir John. And she realized, then, why she had been shivering.

Although she was afraid, she felt no fear at the moment. And for some reason, any will that she might had used to resist in the past had left her strangely vacant, strangely accepting of this fate. So she allowed her eyes to flutter shut. _Make the best of it, Alice._ She was telling herself. The best! The best was to imagine that these lips were someone else's, that these hands were someone else's, and for a few moments she allowed herself to believe it, to truly believe that the dreams she had locked away in the corner of a drawer in her desk were coming alive as vividly as she had dreamed them. But the brush of his hands – John's hands were smooth and cultured – and the rich scent of vanity invaded her fantasy. The rough, bandaged hands that had been tracing the curves of her shoulders and collarbone dropped away, the scents of chocolate and old books and tea withering as they were replaced by a pungent wave of cologne.

And when she drew back, wishing so much to ask this strange man why his hands were no longer ruined, why he no longer smelled like fantasy and dreams, she found herself staring back into a pair of staid brown eyes watching her very carefully, like a deer frozen at the sound of approaching footsteps. It was because of his eyes that she extracted herself hastily from his sheepish embrace and, bidding him a mumble of farewells and petty excuses, slipped back into the brightness and pleasant dullness of the ongoing party.

He did not have green eyes, so when they were married properly before the wealth of society, or at least the portion of society Alice's mother approved of, Alice kissed him briefly and matter-of-factly and tossed the bouquet of flowers to an exuberant Margaret. She turned on her heel and glided down the steps, John at her arm, and gave her giddy sister a secret smile that confirmed Margaret's girlish excitement. Once Margaret was out of sight, the smile slipped a little sideways. She turned to John and his Plain Brown Eyes, smiled softly, and asked if he would mind terribly if she retired for a few hours before the celebration began. He gave a bow of acquiescence, and Alice returned quietly to the Kingsley house, treading dirt into the checkered front hall and climbing the stairs wearily.

She stood in the doorway of her bedroom, this room she had slept in since childhood, which still had the same white lace curtains she had always hated, the same pastel blue walls, the same neglected assortment of dolls piled on the bookshelves, shoved aside to make way for the books her mother had disapproved of. China. India. Africa. She traced a finger down their spines, shivering at the sensation produced by the materialization of an Impossible Idea.

John was waiting with the wedding guests, a wine glass held loosely in a sweaty palm. He would not give away his nervousness to the others, but Alice still hadn't come back, and he was beginning to grow rather anxious. She did have quite a habit of running off at strange times and disappearing to strange places, often in the middle of conversations, but she had never been simply _gone_.

When Helen Kingsley caught his eye he somehow _knew_. Something about the stern expression upon her face – stern, but interlaced with sorrow and fear – turned his belly to cold iron, guided his weak legs as he floated towards her. In a moment, she stood before him, and he observed up close how white her face was, noted the subtleties in the lines around her eyes, the anxious twitch of her lips. Slowly, painfully, she lifted and dropped a small white note into his outstretched palm. He needn't ask; a single, stiff nod said everything that she would ever need to say. Thank you for taking care of Alice. Thank you for making me a proud mother, if only for a day. Yes, I knew all along. I am so sorry. Yes; she is gone.


End file.
